I encounter situations like this rather often where I am responding to a comment that contains many individual points/statements. I typically will respond with a single comment that contains a quote of each point that is being responded to with my response under neath the respective quote — and, sometimes, for added clarity, a horizontal line separating each response. For example:
Statement 1
My response to Statement 1
Statement 2
My response to Statement 2
etc.
I wonder if it would be better practice to have atomic responses to comments — create a single comment for each individual statement, i.e. spawn a new thread for each new atomic topic. This would allow scores to be representative of each specific response rather than an average of the total, and it may also help with clarity when reading through the comment section, as well as easing the creation of responses (not needing to rely on formatting so much). For example
Comment 1 in reply to comment with multiple points:
Statement 1.
My response to Statement 1.
Comment 2 in reply to the comment with multiple points:
Statement 2.
My response to Statement 2.
etc.
If you’re every boss I’ve ever had you just chose the least important item in the list of questions, answer that, and ignore everything else.
I’ve unfortunately seen that behavior here on Lemmy as well.
Generally you make a single reply that covers everything you wanna say. Making multiple replies to the same thing is considered rude and spammy.
Making multiple replies to the same thing is considered rude and spammy.
I’m just wondering if it’s a practice/belief that should be continued. Perhaps multiple replies is actually a better way to do it, regardless of how it is currently interpreted.
I don’t like the multiple comment idea.
If the conversation is at the point where you are replying to replies, and you’ve sent me three rebuttals with each of them asking for clarification or verification from me, I’m now sending 3-6 replies back, which may require you to send 12 or more.
Also, I’d lose track of who said what and would end up referencing something from a conversation with someone else.
If the conversation is at the point where you are replying to replies, and you’ve sent me three rebuttals with each of them asking for clarification or verification from me, I’m now sending 3-6 replies back, which may require you to send 12 or more.
You are right that the amount of comments would grow rather quickly (exponentially, I think), but the threads, themselves, should be easier to follow — there wouldn’t be multiple conversations happening within each comment.
I’d lose track of who said what and would end up referencing something from a conversation with someone else.
How come? The comments are all visually tied together in the thread hierarchy (well, assuming that one isn’t reading Lemmy content from Mastodon, or with the Chat mode in the Lemmy UI)
I never look at the threads. I get a notification on my phone that somebody responded. I read the response, I reply to it if necessary. I’m not opening up the entire thread and reading through a conversation from the beginning again.
I don’t think so. It just clutters things up and makes referencing the points and counter-points later more difficult if they’re all spread out in multiple replies instead of just 1.
It just clutters things up
How so? Are you just referring to the sheer number of comments as being clutter? I would argue that it’s cleaner as there is less of a need of large comments and extensive utilization of quotes. Ideally, one comment would receive one direct reply without any extra formatting.
It […] makes referencing the points and counter-points later more difficult if they’re all spread out in multiple replies instead of just 1.
How so? Everything is still contained in a threaded hierarchy (assuming that one isn’t using something like Mastodon, or Lemmy-UI’s Chat feature in the comment section). If the comments are contained within scope/context, relevant information to the thread shouldn’t be spread out. The relevant information should be contained within the path of the n-ary tree.
You could have support for this thing in the board’s software, but I don’t think it’s common. So normally, where a post will have at least a header, sometimes also a footer, multiple posts means duplicated data on screen. Pretty minor though.
I think it fragments the workflow a bit because normally you can just quote a block and easily interject your replies + add more quote syntax. If it were multiple posts you’d need to repeat certain steps each time. Personally I want to minimize switches between keyboard and mouse. On mobile it’s more even.
I see both styles here and there. It might be too much if multiple posts were the norm but when it’s occasional it really doesn’t matter to me. I’d rather you do what feels natural.
I think multiple comments would reduce clarity. It is rare for any signle point in an opinion to stand on its own as an atomic unit. A reader would need to jump through a thread to follow your line of reasoning in its entirety.
Single points of an argument may be valid or true on their own, but it is the mutual reinforcement of several points in agreement with each other that will educate or convince someone.
It is rare for any signle point in an opinion to stand on its own as an atomic unit.
But if it does, wouldn’t it be better for it to be its own comment?
A reader would need to jump through a thread to follow your line of reasoning in its entirety.
But isn’t that what already happens? The only specific relevant difference is that, currently each comment in the thread could contain any number of individual arguments happening simultaneously.
it is the mutual reinforcement of several points in agreement with each other that will educate or convince someone.
This is a fair point — I hadn’t considered this.
I generally try and pick few of the strongest points and reply to those. It’s impossible to debate someone who replies back as you demonstrated above. The discussion gets out of hand in no time.
The format on here isn’t really suited to multiple responses, imo, but you should look at a website called Kialo. I haven’t used it in years and I don’t know if it’s active but it’s an interesting concept based very much on that idea, with the aim of making discussions more formal and rigorous.
Here's an example of what it looks like, for the discussion topic Should American Football Be Banned?
The first circle shows top level positions that one might take, one of which I’ve selected, suggesting it should be reformed rather than banned. Coming out from that are points in favor or against, like, “It is not possible to reform American football to make it safe enough to play,” and then from that point there’s more points, one saying that risk of brain injury is unavoidable and another pointing out health risks that could be addressed, like heat illness.
It's also possible to view the discussion in a different format, like so:
Clicking on any of those points will let you see the replies.
New comments have to be approved and they have to be meaningfully different from things that have already been posted, and they’re supposed to be limited to a single point.
And you can comment on points suggesting clarification
It’s a pretty different format and vibe compared to what we have here, but even if it’s not something you’re into, I think it’s an interesting little experiment. Imo, you would need something formatted that way for the multiple comment approach to work well and be readable.
